LaRouche was jailed in 1989 for tax evasion and related infractions, but more basically for political reasons. In order to get out of jail, he agreed to operate as an asset of the US intelligence community. This led to the ouster of several leaders like myself who would not accept that capitulation. Since 1994-5, his political and economic analysis has become increasingly erratic and confused, always stressing that nothing can be done for world economic development without US leadership and control - an absurdity. He did not oppose Obama's election, but then discovered that Obama was the new Hitler. He virtually predicted the end of the world for last October 12, and it did not ensue. LaRouche is now 87 years old and needs to retire, but insists on maintaining a personality cult. HIs group has lost much of its membership and is of marginal importance within the US. In other countries there are still some who mistakenly view LaRouche as a significant domestic opposition to US financial imperialism, but this estimate is obsolete. LaRouche is increasingly irrelevant, and the quality of the group's journalistic output has collapsed to grotesque levels.

Accordingly, I suggest that we forget about LaRouche and see what can be done for Latvia.

Larouche's most highly visible former disciple, the brilliant Webster Tarpley, would probably agree with this semi-sympathetic analysis... or at least that's my impression, based on Tarpley's occassional comments (in recent years, anyway) about his former guru. The comments are always brief and dismissive, and they usually go something like this:

"LaRouche is much too close to Langley, these days!"

I suspect that Webster still holds a soft spot in his heart for that elderly and increasingly erratic savant -- and is waiting until Lyndon passes to really "tell all" about the "cult of personality" from which Webster successfully escaped.

Nevertheless, a "Langley Influence" of some sort likely predates LaRouche's get-out-of-jail-free deal by several years.

My own first awareness of the LaRouche cult goes back decades, to a much more innocent time (at least for me) when I encountered a cadre of his acolytes handing out pamphlets warning of the "death camps" that were allegedly being planned under the guise of the then-new (on the national agenda) Hospice Movement.

Shortly thereafter, I heard a live radio interview with one of LaRouche's congressional candidates, a young woman from Cantonsville Maryland. The host of the program was taking calls from listeners, and in the midst of a digressive discussion over whether she was from an Ashkenazi or Sephardic background, the caller suddenly switched topics and asked her:

"Are you MK-Ultra?"

Her instantaneous response:

"Yes, I have been."

And then the conversation (over her Jewish ancestry) resumed without a hitch, and even more surprisingly without the host picking up on the strangeness of the non sequitur question and its disturbing, "robotically" delivered, brief answer, which still haunts me as being eerily reminiscent of:

"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."